Carlos Solis
In the 1930s British psychologist Frederick Bartlett asked volunteers to retell a Native American tale, “The War of the Ghosts,” several times over weeks and months. He noticed the story changed with each retelling: supernatural elements vanished, the plot simplified, and the tale took on familiar Western shapes. By the end of the experiment, participants no longer reproduced the original; they remembered their own version of the story.
Modern studies show a similar pattern. In one lab experiment, researchers showed participants objects on a screen and asked them to remember the objects’ positions. When the background behind the objects changed, some people pointed to the wrong spot. After that first mistake, the incorrect position often stuck: later they recalled the object in the wrong place, even when researchers tested them again with the original background.
The reason is simple: memory reconstructs itself. Retrieval makes a memory highly pliable—psychologists call this lability. Each time you recall an event, you don’t just pull a file from an archive; you rewrite it, add new details or judgments, and then save it again. So you often end up storing not the original experience but a “memory of a memory.”
Your first day of school is a good example. When you remember it now, your memory no longer relies only on what happened that day. Each later recall may have altered details under the influence of subsequent school experiences. If your school years went well, the memory can take on pleasant colors; if school was difficult, that first day can look like a warning of trouble.
That plasticity can feel alarming, but it also creates an opportunity to work on memories and reduce their emotional impact. Researchers call this retrieval-induced forgetting. If you focus on certain aspects of a memory during retrieval, other details gradually fade.
A study published in October 2025 showed that you can use this process to ease fears tied to unpleasant past events. For example, if a job interview went badly, deliberately re-experiencing the situation while concentrating only on what went well can weaken memories of failure and increase confidence in the next interview.
This article draws from BBC Science Focus.
